Remember Me
by gleekymcgrey
Summary: "Hi Mr. Stark." He said, like the anxious and stubborn and frustrating kid from Queens Tony met a lifetime ago. "You grew up, kid." Peter smiled, "You got old." Tony chuckled, "Happens to the best of us." / 40 year-old Peter Parker pays an old friend a visit years after his Spiderman days.


Remember Me

Premise: 46 year-old Peter Parker visits an old friend after his Spiderman years.

Peter straightens his tie and smooths out the creases on his blue shirt. He knew he should have probably changed before coming here, probably a clean shirt without today's lunch smeared on the front, but the meeting ran late and he still had one stop and the traffic was just _terrible_ and a lot of the other things that could go wrong, did go wrong. It was like the universe was telling him to just go home, change into a comfortable pair of pyjamas and try again some other day.

But he knew he couldn't put it off. Not again.

It had to be today.

He looked at himself through the car's rear view mirror, noting the growing number of white hairs on his head and the wrinkles on his forehead. _Man, he got old._ When did that happen? It felt like it wasn't such a long time when he was sixteen and leaping off of skyscrapers, doing homework in foreign countries while on missions, getting his hair tousled by Miss Romanoff at breakfast and learning more than what school can offer from Dr. Banner's research lab. Peter had the best adolescent years and the years that followed seemed bland in comparison.

There wasn't much to do when the world became peaceful as a result of their hard work. At the end of it they all got to go home.

" _This is why we do it, kid. So we can go home."-_ Mr. Stark once told him.

For Peter, going home meant going to college at MIT, thanks to the hard-to-top recommendation letters he got from Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner. Fast forward through all-nighters and spring break beach parties and then college graduation. Fast forward some more and he got married, and though his old friends weren't there, he knew they were glad to see him move forward and make a home for himself.

"Mr. Parker?" Two knocks on his mirror. He rolled down his window and smiled at the young guard. Probably in his early twenties, this guy. "Glad to see you here, sir. I'm sure he'll be thrilled to see you. You can just leave the car right here, Mr. Parker. The valet's gonna take care of it for you."

"Oh, okay great." He nodded and got off. "Thank you."

"Daddy, are we going to be here a while?" His twelve year-old son asked. _Kids these days_ -Peter thought, shaking his head.

He nodded, "Yeah, we're just visiting an old friend of mine."

The mansion was just as vast as he remembered, with a perfectly maintained lawn, spiral hedges and Ecuadorian rose bushes circling the perimeter. Mr. Stark had it built some time ago after his wedding to Ms. Potts, and it became their home since. Peter meant to visit often, but... _life got in the way,_ he supposed. It was like he blinked and it was thirty years later, nervously walking up the short flight of steps to the main door.

"Your friend's house is pretty neat, Dad."

"He's Iron Man, so...well, he _was._ "

Tony took another breath. _Yeah, that hurt._ Breathing seemed like such a chore now, every rise and fall of his chest like pins and needles on his lungs, making it a little bit harder to keep the air coming. Years of cigarette smoking and other suspicious gases- _not all of them legal-_ finally caught up with him, and now he was dying in the most boring, ridiculous thing 40-year old Tony Stark would scoff at-cancer. He always thought he'd die in battle- _Thanos was a ninety five percent sure defeat and he was certain he was not getting out of that one alive but here we are-_ or some stupid lab experiment gone wrong while he was at his prime, in his 50's, maybe early 60's.

Tony didn't think he'd see himself at eighty seven. Though eighty eight do seem like a stretch based on how things are going.

"Mr. Stark? Someone's here to see you." Angela, his wonderful nurse, told him through the half-opened door.

"Who is it?" He exhaled and pushed himself upwards, sitting up on the bed.

"He told me to tell you 'Underoos' sir, and that you'd know exactly what that means."

Tony thought his heart had stopped. Could it be? His lungs were failing, his joints were only good for short distance walking to the kitchen or to the gardens, and his heart could stop at any given moment, but his brain was something else. He remembered every last bit of his life with spectacular clarity. "Send him in, Angelulu."

The pretty young thing smiled timidly and nodded, "Right away, Mr. Stark."

"Hey kid." His voice came out raspier than he thought, his breath catching somewhere in his sucky pipes. Tony looked at the man before him. Tall, like Tony imagined he would be. Lean, though there was a bit of a love handle thing going on around the belly. Scruffy, dark circles around the eyes, disheveled hair. Well, just as he expected, Peter Parker grew up to be ordinary. Just what Tony wanted for the kid.

"Hi Mr. Stark." He said, like the anxious and stubborn and frustrating kid from Queens Tony met a lifetime ago.

"You grew up, kid."

"You got old."

Tony chuckled, "Happens to the best of us." He scooted and tapped the side of the bed.

Peter sat on the bed with him. "So, Lung Cancer huh?"

"Yeah, it's…" Tony trailed off, looking for a better word, "...it's _not_ great at all. This thing just sucks. Don't smoke, and if you _do_ smoke, just stop and take care of yourself. This isn't a good way to go out, you know what I mean? Just don't...don't do it…" It hurt more when he talked, but there was no way Tony would pass up this chance to speak with Peter.

"I don't smoke, Mr. Stark." Peter interrupted; his way of saying that it was okay. That he didn't have to say anything. He knew how much it hurt to even push air in and out of Tony's lungs, let alone do small talk.

But he might be dying but Tony was the same stubborn man-child he had been. "...good. That's good. So, how've you been, huh? What do you do-"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Stark." Peter blurted out. He knew what he came here to say and he wasn't going to keep it in any longer. "I'm so sorry. I should have been here sooner...and I should have kept in touch and…"

"Hey, hey…" Tony sighed, "You did the right thing, Peter."

"No, I-"

"Ssh, shut up. The adult is talking here."-he smirked. Peter chuckled. "...you did the right thing. Do you remember what it was like? The running, the fighting, the living in a high security compound, being monitored 24/7? You were just this small thing. Just a kid that should be out in field trips and summer camps, not fighting bad guys in Romania."

Peter scoffed, "It was a very cool time, Mr. Stark."

"Oh I agree, we were on _fire._ " He shook his head, looking back to the _"glory days"_ of Avenging. "...but I didn't want that for you, kid. I wanted you to have more than that. We all did. We were weirdly overprotective of you then. Well, at least _I_ was." he sighed, choking back tears. _Eugh, sentiment._ "I wanted you to finish high school and go to college, see the world as a tourist and not as someone on a mission, meet a nice girl, get married and have a quaint little house in the suburbs where you have to drive thirty minutes to your work, have barbeque with the nosy neighbors on weekends, maybe have kids..." he sighed, looking at Peter through tear-filled eyes, "...all of that boring, normal, happy average person stuff. Do you understand?"

Peter nodded slowly, "Yeah…I do."

"I wanted you to have everything we missed out on. Me, Steve, Romanoff, Banner, you know all of us...we missed out on a lot of things, kid. Clint missed out on his own children. And besides, I did tell you to go away and live your life."

"I should have known better and came to visit anyway." He looked down, shaking his head.

"No, Peter. You did know better. You listened to me." Tony sighed. "We all agreed, and we all kept our promises to each other. We were all better for it, don't you think?"

Peter smiled, "We got to go _home,_ Mr. Stark."

"That's right." Tony nodded, "Man, Pepper would have _loved_ to see you all grown-up."

"I-I'm sorry I wasn't there when she…"

Tony rolled his eyes, "Stop apologizing, Peter. Pepper and I, we lived full lives. We had all that boring, normal, happy average person stuff."

"She was always so nice to me before, and…."

Outside the room there was a sound of glass breaking. Tony was curious but Peter knew immediately what it was. He sighed and got up from the bed. "I hope that wasn't some Ming Dynasty vase because I really can't afford to pay for that…"

"Who's outside?"

"I did tell him not to touch anything because everything in here costs a _lot,_ lot. But you know how they are, right?" Peter trailed off when he realized he was beginning to mumble. "...I have a kid, he's outside and I think he broke an artifact."

"Your kid's outside?" Tony asked, amazed. He never had any grandkids because none of his children decided to marry yet, but _this,_ this was pretty close to any grandchildren he could have. And it felt amazing. "-what's the kid doing outside? Send him in, I wanna meet him."

"Oh?Oh okay, right away." Peter went out of the room and talked to the boy. Fortunately it was just a glass of water he knocked over and not the more precious displayed on the walls. Then Peter led him to the bedroom, telling him again to not touch anything that could break. "Okay Mr. Stark, this is Anthony Ben Parker. I ah...I call him _Tony._ "

Tony looked up at Peter in surprise, then at the skinny kid in front of him. Pepper wanted to name one their sons after him but Tony disagreed. He felt like after all the terrible things he's done in his life, he could never be worthy of that honor. He always felt like the amount of good he's done can't make up for the bad ones, no matter how many times Pepper told him otherwise.

But somewhere, someone else believed in him. "Oh kid, you didn't…"

"I did, yeah." Peter smiled.


End file.
